Events at the Library

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WINTER TERM 2010

Portland State Library Presents

Spotlight on Portland State Faculty Authors:

Melanie Mitchell

Complexity: A Guided Tour

4pm, Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Branford P. Millar Library

Room 170
1875 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97207

What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer.

In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields.

Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity: A Guided Tour, offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time. (Oxford University Press).

2010 William Stafford Celebration:

A Portland State Library Gathering of Poets

7pm, Thursday, January 28, 2010

Branford P. Millar Library

Room 170
1875 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97207

Poet Michelle Glazer, who is a professor of creative writing at Portland State and Portland State graduate students, Michael Achterman, Wendy Noonan, and Kirsten Rian, will read one or two of their favorite poems by the late Oregon Poet Laureate, William Stafford, as well as one or two of their own poems. Poet Shelley Reece, Professor Emeritus at Portland State and the chairman of the Friends of William Stafford will preside over the gathering and read his favorite Stafford poems as well as his own poetry.

There will be an open mike at the end of the program where guest poets can read a favorite Stafford poem and one of their own.This annual event is in partnership with the Friends of William Stafford.

Admission is free and open to the public.
Questions? Write to library_public_relations@lists.pdx.edu.

FALL TERM 2009

Portland State Library Presents

Spotlight on Portland State Faculty:

Christine Rose and Gina Greco's Translation,

The Good Wife's Guide: Le Menagier de Paris

4pm, Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Branford P. Millar Library

Room 160
1875 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97207

Portland State professors, Christine Rose and Gina Greco, will present their translation, The Good Wife's Guide: Le Menagier de Paris, the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text, which provides unique insights into the domestic life of women during the late Middle Ages.

Free admission and open to the public. More information? Call 503.725.4552.

Portland State Library presents the documentary, Welcome to Iran!

Welcome to Iran
5th Avenue Cinema
5th & Hall
Portland, OR

The Portland State Library presents a video project, Welcome to Iran, as part of of the September Project 2009 at the 5th Avenue Cinema, Friday, October 16, at 7 pm. A chat with filmmaker, Art Wright, will follow the screening.

Welcome to Iran is a video project by Art Wright, which explores Persian history by visiting sites both ancient and contemporary. It was taken during a trip with a group made up mostly of Oregonians to Iran in November 2008. Not quite a travelogue, not a slide show,it mixes digital stills and moving images in an attempt to explain the attitude of today's Iran. While not overtly political, (in fact discussions of contemporary issues were discouraged while in Iran), it nevertheless touches on issues now made relevant by the recent events in Iran.

For more information, please call 503.725.4552.

Free admission and open to the public.

Tony Wolk & Molly Gloss:
Spotlight on Portland State University Faculty Authors

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
4:00pm - 5:30pm

Branford P. Millar Library
1st Floor, Room 160
1875 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97201

Come enjoy readings from PSU faculty authors! Tony Wolk will read
from his new novel, Lincoln's Daughter, and Molly Gloss will discuss
her latest novel, The Hearts of Horses. The authors will also
talk about their writing processes.

Admission is free and open to the public; however, admission wil be limited to the first 65 attendees.

Portland State: A History in Pictures

Book Launch Celebration
Friday, April 24, 2009

Branford P. Millar Library, 2nd floor
1875 SW Park Avenue
Portland, OR 97201

5 pm - 7 pm

Join us in celebrating the launch of the new history book, Portland State: A History in Pictures, on Friday, April 24, 2009!

Three years in the making, Portland State: A History in Pictures, features more than 300 color and black-and-white photographs that document Portland State's history, events, and people from its early days as a temporary extension center
to the nationally recognized urban research university that it is today.

A project of the Retired Association of Portland State (RAPS), Portland State: A History in Pictures, written by Richard Sanders '57 with photo editing by Brent Schauer, will be available for purchase at the Book Launch Celebration.

The Portland State Library in collaboration with Retirement Association of Portland State and the PSU Alumni Association invite you to attend this Inauguration event for President Wim Wiewel.

Everybody Reads /Oregon Reads 2009

Kick-Off at
Portland State University

Lauren Kessler at 11am & 7 pm

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom, 3rd floor
1825 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

What if everyone in Oregon read the same book? In celebration of Oregon's sesquicentennial birthday, the selection for Everybody Reads 2009 is Lauren Kessler's Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese-American Family. Hear Lauren Kessler talk about her book on January 15 at Portland State University! This is the main event for Multnomah County Libraries Everybody Reads 2009 in partnership with the Portland State University Library and the PSU Department of English.

For more information, write to events@lists.pdx.edu or call 503.725.4552.

Reading Out Loud: A Public Readathon

Tuesday, January 13, 10 am to 8 pm &
Wednesday, January 14, 10 am to 8 pm  

Multnomah County Central Library, Collins Gallery 
801 S.W. 10th Avenue Portland, OR 97205

Sandy Sampson, MFA candidate in Art and Social Pracitice will lead a public reading of Stubborn Twig.
Take a turn reading out loud or just come and listen! Open to the community. Sponsored by the Portland State
Library and the PSU Department of Art.

To Cry Down Injustice?
Oregonians and Japanese American Removal During WWII

Thursday, January 29, 7 pm
Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238/Browsing Lounge
1825 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

Ellen Eisenberg, professor of history at Willamette University and author
of The First to Cry Down Justice: Western Jews and Japanese Removal during
WWII, will speak about the Jewish response to Japanese internment in three
West Coast cities. Sponsored by the PSU Department of English.

Filmmaker Alton Takiyama-Chung Presents 
his new documentary, Okage Sama De

Friday, February 6, 7 pm
Saturday, February 7, 7 pm
5th Avenue Cinema
510 SW Hall St.
Portland, OR 97201

Through the history-based stories of five Japanese American men, filmmaker Alton Takiyama-Chung
explores the complexity of the Japanese American experience during World War II from the U.S. internment
camps to the front lines in Europe and the Pacific. Takiyama-Chung introduces the film and will
answer questions after the screenings. Sponsored by the PSU Film Committee and the Portland State Library.

The Thirteen Club: How Narrative Nonfiction Brings the Past Alive

Friday, February 13, 11 am
Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 333
1825 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

Award-winning author Paul Collins discusses how variour authors use narrative nonfiction to animate works
like Stubborn Twig. Collins, a professor at Portland State University, is the author of five books and regularly
appears on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday as the program's "literary detective." Sponsored by the PSU Department
of English.

The History of Racism in Oregon

Thursday, February 19, 11 am & 7 pm
Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 294
1825 SW Broadway
Portland, OR 97201

Join us on the National Day of Remembrance of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese
American citizens during World War II. Explore Oregon's complicated historical relationship to racial and cultural differences
Patti Sakurai, professor of ethnic studies at Oregon State University; Darrell Millner, professor of black studies at Portland
State University; and Randy Blazak, professor of sociology at Portland State University. The Oregon historical artifacts
are provided by local collector Kevin Thomas.

Questions? Please write

This event is free and open to the public.
Questions? Write to library_public_relations@lists.pdx.edu.

Melanie Mitchell

Complexity: A Guided Tour

4pm, Tuesday, February 2, 2010

7pm, Thursday, January 28, 2010

Christine Rose and Gina Greco's Translation,

The Good Wife's Guide: Le Menagier de Paris

4pm, Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Free admission and open to the public. More information? Call 503.725.4552.

Portland State Library presents the documentary, Welcome to Iran!

Tony Wolk & Molly Gloss: Spotlight on Portland State University Faculty Authors

Tony Wolk & Molly Gloss:
Spotlight on Portland State University Faculty Authors